The Role of Perceptual Task Parameters in Childrenâs Inflexible Dimensional Switching
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Children at a certain age often have difficulty in flexibly shifting attention between different representational schemes. One example of such cognitive inflexibility occurs in the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task in which 3-year-old children have difficulty switching between sorting dimensions. For instance, after initially sorting the cards by one dimension (e.g., colour) they are unable to sort the cards by a second dimension (e.g., shape). This finding has been primarily associated with problems in attention or inhibition. The present study investigated the role of perceptual information on children’s dimensional shift abilities by manipulating the perceptual characteristics of both task-relevant (the colour or shape of the images on the cards) and task-irrelevant (the background colour or shape of the actual cards themselves) aspects of the task materials between the pre- and post-switch experimental phases. Across three experiments better performance was observed when either task-relevant or task-irrelevant information was changed, with this improved performance occurring when these changes were salient enough to induce a stimulus novelty effect. \nExperiment 4 investigated yet another perceptual feature of the task; the degree of stimulus realism (abstractness) on children’s cognitive flexibility. Children successfully sorted the cards when three-dimensional stimuli were used but perseverated when using two-dimensional cards, providing evidence for the role of representational status of the stimuli in influencing children’s dimensional switching. \nManipulations made to increase the salience of the task material as well as those resulting in reduction of similarity between the two phases of the tasks (or increased novelty) were used to enhance children’s cognitive flexibility. Overall, these findings highlight the critical role played by the perceptual information of the overall experimental context, and have important implications for theories of cognitive flexibility.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".